A half-dozen to 10 passengers jumped atop the pilot and pinned him to the floor, passengers said. Flight 191 landed at Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport at 10:11 a.m., JetBlue said in a statement.

The aircraft was carrying people bound from New York to Las Vegas, Nev., for a security convention, passengers said. JetBlue and Transportation Security Administration officials described the pilot as having a medical condition. He was transported to Northwest Texas Hospital, officials said. He has not been identified.

The crew kicked the pilot out of the cockpit, and he turned unruly, attempting to use the intercom system, which had been disabled, said Josh Redick, 41, of New York. A passenger who works in the security business choked the pilot and took him down, passenger Gabriel Schonzeit said.

The Associated Press is reporting a passenger said a man she and other passengers believed was the captain began yelling about a bomb and had to be restrained.

Heidi Karg, a passenger on the flight, told CNN that she heard a lot of commotion. She said a man was trying to get into the cockpit, shouting “I need the code, gimme the code, I need to get in there.” The pilot urged for someone to restrain him, she said.

Karg said she thought the man was the captain of the flight but that she wasn’t certain. Some male passengers wrestled him to the ground.

The flight arrived in Amarillo about 10 a.m., the New York Post quoted a Federal Aviation Administration statement as saying.

Eyewitnesses on the plane told NewsChannel10 in Amarillo that one of the pilots went to the restroom when he was locked out of the cockpit:

Witnesses say he began banging on the cockpit door and one witness says he began running up and down the aisles screaming until some passengers were able to subdue him until an emergency landing could be made.

JetBlue says an off-duty captain who happened to be aboard the plane went to the flight deck and took over the duties of the ill captain “once on the ground.”

Shane Helton, 39, of Quinlan, Okla., said he saw emergency and security personnel coming on and off the plane as it sat on the tarmac at Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport.

“They pulled one guy out on a stretcher and put him in an ambulance,” said Helton, who went to the airport with his fiancée to see one of her sons off as he joined the Navy.

Helton said the ambulance then sat on the tarmac next to the plane for more than 30 minutes.

The airline says the passengers were awaiting another plane to take them on to their destination.